Ormat Bets on Standardization to Win the Geothermal Race

Electricity demand is climbing at a pace the power industry hasn't seen in a generation, and the companies trying to feed it with geothermal energy are mostly racing in one direction: drill faster. Ormat Technologies is making a different bet. The company that has built and run geothermal plants for six decades thinks the constraint that matters most isn't underground at all. It's the power plant sitting on top.Earlier this month, Ormat introduced the Ormega100, which it calls "the largest binary surface power generation unit in the industry"—a single unit rated at up to 100 MW gross, engineered to run unmanned, with turbine efficiency the company says exceeds 90%. The launch arrived alongside the firm's enhanced geothermal system (EGS) strategy, two subsurface pilot programs, and a record first quarter. But the more revealing story is the logic underneath the hardware, and the executive who articulated it was candid about a posture that sets Ormat apart from the field: the company is, by its own description, deliberately not trying to be first.

Daniel Moelk is Ormat's executive vice president for Subsurface, Wells, and NextGen, responsible for essentially everything the company d

Fuente original: Yahoo Finance (https://finance.yahoo.com/energy/articles/ormat-bets-standardization-win-geothermal-215833081.html)